• Darwin teaching ‘divides opinion’ – Very depressing. This isn’t hard. Creationism and Intelligent Design is not science and therefore has no place in the Science classroom.
• Share the Memories: Happy 8th Birthday iPod – I didn’t get mine until January 2002 but it was worth the wait. After a series of tape and CD players that never quite lived up to the promise, the first gen iPod really did change the way I listened to music. Plus it still works, which is more than can be said for my fifth gen iPod…

• A Sense of Entitlement: Tweetie 2 – I think Apple needs to do more here — to allow for paid upgrades — but I also congratulate the author of Tweetie for having the nerve to charge for a significant update. He’ll come across a lot of resistance but it’s absolutely the right thing to do and it, potentially, paves the way for smaller developers to do the same thing.
• Peep Show ‘won’t change’ for anyone – Looking forward to this. Slightly worried that it might overstay its welcome — how can you top eating a family pet in terms of gross out? — but then I thought that for the last couple of series too…
• Fail Yet Succeed? – Nice discussion of the kind of things that all software projects go through. Really this is about half of my job!

Most people reading this will know that Snow Leopard refers to version 10.6 of the Macintosh Operating System, Apple’s latest update released late last month.

I wasn’t sure whether I should upgrade initially. I have been stung before by being an early adopter. Mac OS X 10.4 was a nightmare on my iMac G5. The big ticket new features such as Dashboard and Spotlight worked just fine¹. What didn’t work were little thing like, oh, networking. Eight times out of ten it couldn’t connect to my AirPort Base station. This made almost everything, including downloading patches to fix this very problem, a compete and utter pain. I think it took until 10.4.3 before everything worked reliably.

• Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty – I find that there are many convincing arguments against capital punishment but maybe it’s the emotional one that works in the end. It could be you?
• Why do some countries drive on the right and others on the left? – Fascinating look at why (and where) we drive on which side of the road.
• Hidden Developer Gems in Snow Leopard – I know it’s geeky but I’m more excited about the new APIs in Snow Leopard than any of the new stuff or even, to a certain extent, the performance improvements.

I try to keep ZX81.org.uk free of direct promotion of my iPhone applications but I think the launch of a new one warrants an exception to the rule.

www.cut is a utility that shortens URLs so that they can be mailed, Twittered or FaceBooked without worrying about character counts or line breaks.

Find out more at the above link or head straight to the App Store to download a copy. It’s free so you have nothing to lose!

• Apple Answers the FCC’s Questions – A few interesting tidbits, including the fact that two reviewers look at every update, but I’d say that there was little of real substance here.
• The brutal truth about America’s healthcare – “But the truth is that the rich, and the insurance firms, just don’t realise what we are going through, or simply don’t care. Look around this room and tell me that America’s healthcare don’t need fixing.” Still finding the whole debate quite bizarre.

• UK ID Card Technology Cloned… – “… in 12 minutes.” Wonder when the government will get the message that ID cards are a bad idea. Oh, and there’s no such thing as unforgeable.
• The hidden truth behind drug company profits – “The idea of ring-fencing life-saving medical knowledge so a few people can profit from it is one of the great grotesqueries of our age. We have to tear down this sick system – so the sick can live.” Big companies and the patent system effectively kill the poorest and most vulnerable people.
• Bodega – Interesting idea: an app store for the Mac. Not run by Apple and hence no crazy review process!

• In pictures: Satellite eye on Earth – July – Awesome images.
• Amber Ale: Brewing Beer From 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast – Science, history and beer, and all in one story. How could I not bookmark this article?
• Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline – “The evidence is staring Microsoft’s leadership in the face that they have lost the most lucrative segment of the market, but, judged by their actions and public remarks, they seem to think it’s all a big joke. They should be sweating this but they’re laughing it off.”

• Anatomy of a feature – Great post describing how hard it really is to add a supposedly easy feature.
• The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading – Good introductory piece about algo trading and the technology used to implement it.

• Senior City-zens: The World’s 10 Oldest Still-Inhabited Cities – “I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.” Maybe Eddie Izzard should have gone with “I was born in the middle east, where the really old history comes from.”
• Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule – If you can’t actually avoid meetings, then at least try to schedule them so you can maximise your productivity. Rings true…
• There’s a pretty significant problem in the new… – I’m starting to expect Graham Chapman to burst in at any second and announce that this is getting far too silly. Apparently any iPhone app that allows “unfiltered internet access,” everything from web browsers to Twitter clients to, presumably, delicious.com clients, now requires a 17+ rating.